a quiet revolution

home less ness

weird no page of this yet.. but fitting with welcome/people page thinking:

we have included some incredible people. we have left off some incredible people.

home less ness (specifically.. how to eliminate it) was one of the first issues/questions of kids (all of us) in a lab.. not about home.. about resources.. so perhaps.. we find a nother way to live.. that offers all of us.. the resources we need.. [where we first started thinking/practicing city as school ness] by freeing us all to be (problem deep enough)

Mark Horvath (@hardlynormal) tweeted at 6:00 AM – 25 May 2018 :
I do not know of even one situation where a homeless person gets the support they need quickly. Not one. It doesn’t happen. The norm is to connect to services multiple times over several years and not get help. That’s a very real problem! We need less process, not more!! (http://twitter.com/hardlynormal/status/999983615093235712?s=17)

latest – [ie: adding home less page day after added Elvis’ page] – elvis summers: 6 min – people that are pissed at ie: homeless/tiny house situation.. every right to be.. but re direct that anger.. my whole issue/cause.. is that something needs to be done right now..

esp this from elvis:

elvis: everything that they’ve been doing.. just doesn’t work.. it’s just circles.. of bureaucratic.. holds .. and wait times.. and you know.. 40-50 yrs.. where’s the housing..?

Even knowing that it is the dogs, and not him, that trigger the interaction doesn’t dilute the importance of being seen. This relationship with his dogs enables a critical human need: to be acknowledged by other humans.

[..]

How can a relationship with a dog achieve such monumental successes where psychology, medicine, and standalone human desire so often fail? One explanation is that the responsibility to care for another living creature provides purpose, focus and thus self-esteem — all vital human needs. Another is the validation and self-worth that comes from the love a dog provides. Irvine put it this way: “We construct dogs as ideal beings — they love unconditionally, they don’t lie, they don’t judge people — so if a being this noble loves us, then there must be something OK with us.”

The non-judgmental quality of the dog is central.

[..]

The essence of dogness is inextricably linked to their relationship with humans. As Irvine explained to me, “Abundant research proves how dogs need our gaze, how they will look at what you’re pointing at because they want to know what you’re looking at. It shows they share intersubjectivity: the sense of ‘I want to know what she’s thinking.’”

There is a reason so many Americans choose to develop their net worth through homeownership: It is a proven wealth builder and savings compeller. The average homeowner boasts a net worth ($195,400) that is 36 times that of the average renter ($5,400).

While many Americans assume that most poor families live in subsidized housing, the opposite is true; nationwide, only one in four households that qualifies for rental assistance receives it

When we think of entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare immediately come to mind. But by any fair standard, the holy trinity of United States social policy should also include the mortgage-interest deduction — an enormous benefit that has also become politically untouchable…The MID came into being in 1913, not to spur homeownership but simply as part of a general policy allowing businesses to deduct interest payments from loans. At that time, most Americans didn’t own their homes and only the rich paid income tax, so the effects of the mortgage deduction on the nation’s tax proceeds were fairly trivial. That began to change in the second half of the 20th century, though, because of two huge transformations in American life. First, income tax was converted from an elite tax to a mass tax: In 1932, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (precursor to the I.R.S.) processed fewer than two million individual tax returns, but 11 years later, it processed over 40 million. At the same time, the federal government began subsidizing homeownership through large-scale initiatives like the G.I. Bill and mortgage insurance. Homeownership grew rapidly in the postwar period, and so did the MID.

The owner-renter divide is as salient as any other in this nation, and this divide is a historical result of statecraft designed to protect and promote inequality.

Poverty and homelessness are political creations.

Once a rarity in America, eviction has become commonplace in our cities, disrupting families, schools and entire neighborhoods.

Steve Jones told ITV News that the response was “just instinct.” And that when he arrived, he immediately started helping young children who has shrapnel wounds. “It was children with blood all over them, they were crying and screaming. We were having to pull nails out of their arms and a couple out of a little girl’s face.”

“Just because I’m homeless doesn’t mean I’ve not got a heart, and I’m not human still. I needed to help. I’d like to think someone would come and help me if I needed help. It’s just instinct.”

Residents didn’t ask to live at Sanderson. They were chosen by researchers who pored through Denver Police data looking for the city’s persistently homeless and frequently arrested, men and women who are marked as “transient” and have rotated in and out of jail mostly for so-called “homeless” crimes — such as illegal camping, trespassing or public intoxication.

The initial list, compiled by Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., included 4,000 names.

The mental health center received the names, birthdates and recent mugshots of 87 people; the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless received 187, chosen randomly from the 4,000.

Catholic Charities, meanwhile, opened a 100-bed shelter for women in a renovated building northeast of the city Thursday. Women, who make up one-third of Denver’s homeless population, quickly fill downtown shelters.

Last night I arrested a guy for breaching his licence conditions following release from prison. He’d been out two weeks. Street homeless. He cried with relief when we came for him because it’s so cold.

While we waited for a van he chatted with my crewmate, who remembered him as a little boy watching his dad getting arrested. Many, many times. Until he died.

The awful irony is that so many #homeless people sleep in the damp, cold doorways of empty shops with dry, warm, empty flats above them. The problem & it’s solution are only a few yards away from each other.

Homeownership has long been the veritable cornerstone of the American Dream. But the unfortunate reality is that our nation’s outsize attachment to homeownership may actually be an impediment to achieving it.

Study after study shows that high levels of homeownership can constrain mobility, lock people in place, and hold back the economy as a whole. Homeowners are a key factor in the NIMBYism—or what I like to term the “New Urban Luddism”—that limits housing production and the density that lies at the root of urban innovation and economic growth. But the political clout of homeowners goes beyond local NIMBYism and zoning politics, extending to politics at the national level.

Owning a home changes a person’s political outlook as he or she seeks to protect the value of their investment. Homeowners participate more vigorously in politics, and their self-interested political posture does not just limit the ability of cities to build more and achieve greater density, it contributes to broader political and economic inequality.

I do not know of even one situation where a homeless person gets the support they need quickly. Not one. It doesn’t happen. The norm is to connect to services multiple times over several years and not get help. That’s a very real problem! We need less process, not more!! (http://twitter.com/hardlynormal/status/999983615093235712?s=17)

huge

@monk51295 13/ Oh, yesterday every homeless person we talked to has a smartphone. All of them are on Facebook. One person said he has an account but hates FB and doesn’t use it. Engaging people via their phone will save lives and money but the sector still does nothing to use tech like this

2/ officially chronically homeless. The sector has moved to focus on just chronically homeless people. I once supported that but I no longer think it’s the smart move for a few reasons. 1) We have to do something to help people first entering homelessness that do not fit…

“You don’t see people sleeping on the streets,” says CEO of country’s largest affordable-housing NGO.

Homelessness still exists in Finland, Kaakinen noted, but it has shifted with people staying temporarily with relatives and friends.

Citing a Finnish study, Kaakinen said the savings associated with providing one person with supportive housing for one year are at least 15,000 euros ($22, 437).

“In our thinking, a hostel or shelter is always a temporary solution … it’s not a solution to homelessness.”

__________

on housing first (thread – includes denver stats)

Jeff Speck (@JeffSpeckAICP) tweeted at 6:04 AM on Thu, Nov 08, 2018:
To those cities, one can only ask: Are you really willing to spend twice as much on homelessness, and have twice as much of it, because you believe that people should be punished for addiction and mental illness? If not, what’s keeping you? (4/5)
(https://twitter.com/JeffSpeckAICP/status/1060518496428322817?s=03)

Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) tweeted at 8:39 PM – 15 Nov 2018 :
There’s no easy way to say this: Without radical changes, there will be more fire catastrophes like Paradise. The #CampFire and the escalating onslaught of weather emergencies like it, should provoke moral outrage.

Adib Nasereddin (@Adib_Nasereddin) tweeted at 2:03 AM – 6 Dec 2018 :
@QueenNoor Who could ever celebrate when knowing such information and sadly there are homeless kids and unfortunate families all over the world..may GOD be with them all and send angels from all over the world to help in any way possible (http://twitter.com/Adib_Nasereddin/status/1070604589915881472?s=17)